How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re presenting or explaining data.

Using charts and graphs is great for breaking up long text passages, and making technical or statistical data a whole lot simpler to understand.

You can use tables to present data, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, trends and relationships more easily, then graphs and charts allow you to present data in a meaningful and intelligent way that can be quickly understood.

Graphs and charts help present complex information so your audience can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts or graphs to WordPress? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Lets you upload chart or graph data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile browsing

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs which contain information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create your charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert your image into your content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily insert interactive bar charts and graphs into your WordPress content with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

Fortunately, there is a great free plugin for WordPress that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create beautiful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.

Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (see further down the page), or access and download Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WP Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert beautiful graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few mouse clicks.

Visualizer uses Google Visualization API to render charts, which support cross-browser compatibility (adopting VML for older IE versions) and cross-platform portability to iOS and new Android releases, and are based on pure HTML5/SVG technology (adopting VML for old IE versions), so no extra plugins are required.

Visualizer also contains a variety of charts that are optimized to address your data visualization needs, including:

• Line chart
• Area chart
• Bar chart
• Column chart
• Pie chart
• Geo chart
• Gauge chart
• Candlestick chart
• Scatter chart

The plugin is also flexible and customizable, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your site’s design. Several options are available for each chart that allow you to further customize their look.

Additionally, charts are rendered using HTML5/SVG technology to provide cross-browser compatibility (including VML for older IE versions) and cross-platform portability to iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Your web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without requiring the installation of any extra plugins.

How To Install Visualizer

From your WP administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main admin menu …

In the Add Plugins page type “visualizer” into the search field and hit enter …

Locate Visualizer in the search results area and click the “Install Now” button …

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can also get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library from your main menu …

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library screen …

When you first install the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

The next step is to add add charts and graphs to your plugin library.

Visualizer Plugin Configuration

To add a chart or graph to the plugin’s library, click on Add New …

A page will load in your screen displaying all the different kinds of graphs available.

Select the chart or graph type you would like to create and click on the ‘Next’ button …

The selected graph/chart type will open up in a new window.

The next step is to upload a CSV file that contains your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• Your first row contains the column headings.
• Your second row includes the series type (e.g. boolean, date, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as per the above requirements …

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, simply study the sample spreadsheet supplied with the plugin.

Once you have created your CSV file, select your data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload a CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

Locate and select your data file and then click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin will now import the data from the CSV file and display it using the graph/chart type you have chosen …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a tutorial that explains how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, go here:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing the data, check that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have chosen, the plugin displays a number of customization settings and options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you full control of your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, including:

• General Settings – Configure chart title settings, font styles, tooltip, and legend.
• Pie Settings – Create 3D pie charts, draw slices counterclockwise, set the text content displayed on the slice, create a “donut” pie chart, rotate the chart’s “start” angle and set the slice border color.
• Residue Settings – Set the ‘Visibility Threshold’ (the slice relative part, below which a slice will not show individually.), ‘Residual Slice Label’ (the label for the combination slice that holds all slices below slice visibility threshold, e.g. “Other”), and ‘Residue Slice Color’.
• Slice Settings – Customize the ‘Slice Offset’ (how far to separate the slice from the rest of the pie), and ‘Slice Color’.
• Layout & Chart Area – Configure the layout (total size of chart) including the width and height of the chart as a number of percentage, background color for the main area of the chart and the chart border width and color, and the placement and size of the chart area (where the chart itself is drawn, excluding axis and legends).

Once you are satisfied with the look of your graph or chart, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

The new chart or graph will now be added to the ‘Visualizer Library’ section …

Note that every element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see in just a moment, this lets you insert charts and graphs into your WordPress content quickly …

Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can be accessed by their type …

After a new item has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, duplicate it, or delete it …

Plugin Usage

After creating a chart or graph and adding it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to a page is really simple.

First, create a new post or page (or open an existing one) …

Next, place your mouse cursor where you want to insert your visual element into the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Find the graph or chart you want to add to your content and click the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

After you have finished adding the shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your page or post …

After your post/page has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …

You will see the element in the location where you have added the shortcode …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs and charts for mobile users …

As you can see, Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This makes managing interactive graph data in WordPress very efficient.

The plugin developers have created a series of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use the plugin.

For additional tutorials on editing, cloning, deleting and adding data to your charts, go to the website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily create colorful and dynamic bar charts and graphs in WordPress.

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